overkill

The music punches into you like a blunt axe
swinging through the bite of winter. You buckle,
grasping quiet to find your flesh. [Am I here? Am I a ghost?]
Bodies floating and drifting in the dead blue chemical sea.
You want to go back to before you were born,
when there was nothing, no breathing, no fairy tales.
You can't go back. Nothing is a relative term.

The grass crawls in between your fingers. Stronger
and slower than your test-tube skin. Unwind
like rope down a well, dark forever. What time is it?
You know the answer, but it is not an answer.
It melts in candlelight, but is as solid as hunger.
If you can fall asleep, you can disappear into whatever
is holding you up, be it earth or blood or death.
What time is it? You swallow once,
and your eyes shift like a code.

Can you swallow them? The eyes?
The eyes, the eyes in a jar, swirling and
tumbling against something invisible,
can you swallow them? They slide
gently, you feel them, quivering bent orbs
and then dissolving dark blue, searching out the
corners and hiding-places of your body, until
your skin is bleeding cold cerulean eyeball music,
and you can do nothing but cough.

It is strange and wrong, coughing, like smashing
yourself on a plank of dark shining wood. Dirty
clouds hanging limp on your forehead, the blue
of your eyes is dull. It no longer pierces,
is no longer a weapon. You are not useful,
but at least you cannot be used.
At least you can lie down.